Food recalls

About food recalls

Food recalls in our database come from two agencies. The FDA covers most of what's sold in a US grocery store: produce, packaged snacks, baked goods, baby formula, supplements, beverages, condiments, seafood. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service covers meat, poultry, and processed egg products. If your recalled item has an EST. number on the label, it's USDA; otherwise it's almost always FDA.

The single most common trigger for a food recall is undeclared allergens. Most of those are precautionary — the product was packaged on a line that also runs allergen-containing products, and a label revision flagged the cross-contact risk. The other major category is pathogen contamination: Listeria monocytogenes (especially in ready-to-eat refrigerated products), Salmonella (poultry and produce), and E. coli O157:H7 (ground beef and leafy greens). These three pathogens together account for most Class I severity recalls.

If you're checking whether a recall affects your kitchen: match the lot code or best-by date on your package against the affected production run listed in the recall notice. If the codes match, follow the remedy. Don't taste-test — Listeria and the toxin-producing E. coli serotypes cause serious illness with no warning flavor or smell.